Many of us, usually when we’re young, and for a variety of reasons, teach ourselves to numb and deaden our feelings, to only think about, rather than fully experience them. Distorting or turning off emotional awareness is a relatively easy thing for most of us to do. We simply tighten our muscles and hold our breath. And by deadening our bodies in this way, we bury emotions that cause us pain or discomfort. Therefore, it’s by focusing on the physical and emotional sensations in our bodies that we are able to recover these emotions and become mindful…

Let’s begin by exploring your breathing. Are you a person who breathes fully and deeply? To check this out put one hand on your stomach, and the other on your chest and take a deep breath now. How much does each hand move? Is it at least an inch? If your hands move only a little, or barely at all, don’t be surprised, or disappointed in yourself. Most adults have become shallow breathers, simply because we don’t take the time to notice how we breathe, or how this affects us. If you continue to pay attention, your breathing will progressively deepen over time…

You may find it helpful to imagine that as your breath goes in and out it carries the message :”permit the sensation ” or “allow the sensation “. You may want to notice if the feeling seems familiar – if you felt this way before? If it’s familiar, you may ask , How old is this sensation? Don’t analyze – just notice and immediately go back to focusing on your experience…

--

How the Ride the Wild Horse audio training evolved

The meditative exercise called Ride the Wild Horse has been in use for over 25 years. The process was first developed in the early 80s when I was working with cancer patients at UCLA. Our research found that those patients who were emotionally aware, comfortable with a wide range of emotions, and used this awareness in their decision-making process, managed to live significantly longer than those who disowned their emotions. While it seemed like a revelation at the time, it is now widely acknowledged that social and emotional health is a major contributor to a patient’s ability to overcome life-threatening health problems.

In developing a process for teaching patients how to recognize their emotional experience, several challenges became apparent:

Words were inadequate tools for helping people discover their emotional experience. Physical feelings and bodily sensations were much better resources for tracking emotional experience.

People often feared the emotional experience they were trying to connect with. So, in order to succeed, the learning process had to be paired with something very pleasant that both reduced and resolved their fear.

To overcome these challenges, relaxation became an important part of the process. Deep breathing, muscle relaxation, and elements of Vipassana meditation were integrated into the process. At a later date, when it was discovered that rapid stress reduction could be accomplished through sensory means, quick stress relief training was added.

The name, Ride The Wild Horse, was inspired by the beautiful and powerful image of a wild horse whose feral energy can be tamed, harnessed, and eventually befriended.

Translate This Page (An Approximation)

Categories

News & Olds

BREAK THE SURFACE
_______________________________
To ride the unbalance* between:
1. excellence and a kind, singular and porous identity that contains some of the scruples, humor, musicality & the beauty of a harsh and confusing, yet benign and rich reality - away from distractions.
2. the stupidity and blindness of complacency, violence, injustice,
pretense, egos, short-term/wishful and group "thinking," and empty talk - in all of their surprising embodiments.
_______________________________
An appeal for a world NOT so caught up in anthropo/ego/euro/ethno/oculo/esthetico -CENTRISM.
_______________________________
1. Beware of those who claim to be strong - they are often dangerous.
2. Unmask the hoax of "centrality" - ask an "EX-centric" for assistance?
3. Perceive the arrogance of normalcy: everybody, in one way or another, is handicapped... which brings us back to 1.
_______________________________
*Not unrelated to "There is beauty and there are the humiliated. Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present, I should like never to be unfaithful either to the second or the first." --- Albert Camus

About

___________________Screens Reveal AND Conceal

Born and raised in Paris, Pier Marton moved to the U.S. in the early seventies to live in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco and, more recently, St. Louis; in parallel to teaching media at major universities, his many video-art activities have included video installations, performances and documentaries (with works in prominent museums like MoMA and Beaubourg).

As new media offers more and more a form of pseudo-challenge to the status quo, for Pier Marton it is “no-media” that now represents the next frontier: to look beyond media and most concepts, however "practical" those may appear to be.